With the credit crunch not likely to end anytime soon, companies are expected to look within their organisations for costs to be reduced. And obviously, the ´nice to haves´ will have to go first. It will be interesting to see what will happen to the Corporate Social Responsibility programs, that so many companies have started to engage in over the last years. Will the economic downturn bring a (temporary) end to these programs? The coming period will be the test. CSR programs which are embedded within an organisations culture and operations will have the biggest chance of survival. If CSR is a board level issue, and management is committed to doing things right, sustainable and ethical, cost cutting cannot be the sole reason to completely end CSR programs. However, CSR programs that have been set up as pure PR initiatives, are likely to be dropped. In the latter case, these companies should be prepared to come up with a strong explanation as to why their CSR programs have been cut back. If not, the result will be a back firing loss of credibility.

Check out this great video explaining why CSR has gained so much ground…